The rest of the Seasonal Cooking classes are still being finalized, but they should be announced soon and will be posted on our Facebook page once they’re available. Interested individuals can register at https://sitkakitch.eventsmart.com/ (click on the event title to register). Please pre-pay online using credit/debit cards or PayPal. If you want to pre-pay using cash or check, please contact Chandler, Claire or Clarice at Sitka Conservation Society (747-7509) to arrange payment. We need at least eight students registered for each class to guarantee they happen.

Class size is limited, so register early. The usual class cost is $27.50 per class, plus a food/supply fee that will be divided among registered participants. The registration deadline is late on the second night before each class. For more information about the class series, call Lisa Sadleir-Hart at 747-5985 or Jasmine Shaw at 747-9440.

A slideshow of photos from Tuesday’s Cooking With Hank Moore class is posted below.

Local cab driver, fisherman, teacher and musician Hank Moore will teach a class in the new Sitka Kitch Seasonal Cooking class series from 6-8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 16, at the Sitka Kitch community rental commercial kitchen. Hank said students will cook collard greens or mustard greens, black-eyed peas, brown rice, black cod, lemon water and caramelized onion.

Hank grew up in the south, so his dishes have a soul food base. But he’s been in Sitka for many years, so he’s Alaskanized this dish with black cod (sablefish).

Class space is limited, so register early. This class costs $27.50 per person, plus a food/supply fee split between the registered students. The registration deadline is 4 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 15.

Register online at http://sitkakitch.eventsmart.com (click on class title) and pre-pay using credit/debit cards or PayPal. To pre-pay with cash or check, contact Chandler, Claire, or Clarice at 747-7509 to arrange payment.

(This is part of a new series of “Meet your vendors” articles, where Sitka Local Foods Network Intern McLane Ritzel is writing features about our regular Sitka Farmers Market vendors.)

Taking a stroll through this summer’s Sitka Farmers Markets, several perfectly baked rhubarb pies may have caught your eye. Outside in the tent next to the Sitka Local Foods Network produce tent, stood the talented gardener and craftswoman Linda Wilson, a Sitka local for the past three decades who owns Seaview Garden and Jewelry Arte.

Wilson’s father was in the USDA Forest Service. Wilson was raised in California until the age of 6, when her family moved to Ketchikan. A few years later, her father moved the family to Sitka and then to Juneau for his work. Wilson attended high school in Juneau, but yearned to be back in Sitka where they had bought a house in 1975 out on Halibut Point Road. The family returned to Sitka after Wilson’s father retired from the USDA Forest Service in 1982. Wilson lost both her mother and her brother to illnesses, and has been taking care of her father in Sitka since his retirement.

In Sitka, Wilson fell into gardening, because outside of the house is where she felt she had the most control and freedom. Inside the house was dad’s territory. She ripped out her salmonberry bushes in 2004, and learned how to grow broccoli when she met Florence Welsh. Today, she grows carrots, snap peas, greens including kale, collard, and lettuce, and rhubarb. She loves composting and mostly uses coffee grounds and spent grains. At the Sitka Farmers Markets, she sold collard greens and delicious pies. Strawberry-rhubarb is her favorite.

This year, she has been growing zucchini and tomato plants inside her newly established high tunnel via a NRCS grant. She thanks those in the community who helped her put up the high tunnel, and particularly market vendor Kerry MacLane’s instrumental assistance. Even though she has retired from the Sitka Local Foods Network board of directors, Linda was one of the original board members. She also was one of the first managers of the Sitka Farmers Market, and she organized the first Let’s Grow, Sitka! education event.

Wilson loves making homemade pizza from scratch with homegrown tomatoes, onions, sliced zucchini, nasturtiums, broccoli, garlic, and basil. She says, “I grow tomatoes because it’s a challenge, and I’m gonna get it.” She also makes a mean pesto with carrot top greens. When she produces an overabundance of produce, she donates to the Salvation Army.

She loves to go mushroom foraging, and also picks berries to make a variety of jams. Her favorite is blueberry-huckleberry jam.

From 1985 until 2007, Wilson managed one of the local gift shops in town, where they sold authentic Russian imports. From 2003 to 2006, she also worked on a cruise ship in the Baltic Sea where she lectured on Russian arts and crafts, knowledge she had gained while managing the gift shop. Today, she works part-time with the Sitka Economic Development Association (SEDA), takes care of her father, and makes beautiful sculpted wire jewelry with gemstones.

Every February, Wilson makes a two-week trip down to one of the biggest jewelry shows in the world. She has attended the show 12 out of the past 13 years. Her favorite stones are fossils: coral, ammonites, and sand dollars, because, she says, “They used to be living.” She has a rock shop in her house where she houses her jewelry making studio with beautiful stones and lapidary equipment including a slab saw, trim saw, grinder, and rock tumbler, throughout. “Nature makes amazing things.”

When she is not out in the garden, tending to her father, or making jewelry, Wilson loves “petting kitty bellies.” They have two cats, Spike and Sandy, at home, though many more are buried out back. “Serving as compost,” Wilson jokes.

If you don’t see her at the Sitka Farmers Market, make sure to check out Linda Wilson’s beautiful jewelry at the Island Artists Gallery, an artists cooperative on Lincoln Street. Her jewelry makes great gifts for yourself, family members, and friends.

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Do you support the local foods movement in Sitka? We are recruiting new board members and volunteers for 2019. Click the photo to learn more about us, or attend our next board meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 7, at the Sitka Public Library.

Do you have a business idea for the next great Sitka food product? Enter the Sitka Food Business Innovation Contest to win one of two $1,500 prizes. Entry deadline is April 5, 2019.

Thank you to the Sitka White Elephant Shop (the White E), which gave us a $1,000 grant so we can match produce purchases of up to $20 per market for SNAP and WIC beneficiaries at the 2018 Sitka Farmers Markets (click image below for more information)

Like what we do? Please sponsor us in 2019 (Click image for more details)

Thank you to the Alaska Comprehensive Cancer Partnership for sponsoring the Sitka Local Foods Network in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019

Thank you to SEARHC for sponsoring the Sitka Local Foods Network in 2016, 2017 and 2018

Thank you to the Sitka True Value for sponsoring the Sitka Local Foods Network in 2017 and 2018

Thank you to the Harry Race Pharmacy (White’s Inc.) for sponsoring the Sitka Local Foods Network in 2017 and 2018

Thank you to ALPS Federal Credit Union for sponsoring the Sitka Local Foods Network in 2018

Congratulations to the Sitka Farmers Market

Thank you to Tom’s of Maine for naming the Sitka Local Foods Network as Alaska’s winner in the 2015 50 States For Good program and awarding us $20,000 to improve our programming

Want to support more local foods in Sitka, Alaska? Please consider donating today to the Sitka Local Foods Network. Click the image below to give. Your support is much appreciated. Thanks.

Please support us through Benevity.com. Some corporations will match employee donations on this site. Click the logo below for more information.

The Sitka Local Foods Network is proud to be featured in the Food Tank and James Beard Foundation 2014, 2015 and 2016 Good Food Org Guides. Click the images to learn more.

The Sitka Local Foods Network is a proud member of the Farmers Market Coalition

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Support the Sitka Local Foods Network when you shop through the AmazonSmile program. Click this link to go to our page, and make sure your browser address says smile.amazon.com instead of the usual URL of www.amazon.com.

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